


Magic Madness Heaven Sin

by mabus101



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabus101/pseuds/mabus101
Summary: Rand al'Thor has somehow emerged into modern Sunnydale!  He's half-mad and missing a hand.  Buffy's back from the dead and depressed.  Can they help each other, or will they tear each other--and the world--to pieces?
Relationships: Rand al'Thor/Buffy Summers, Tara Maclay/Willow Rosenberg
Kudos: 4





	Magic Madness Heaven Sin

The world stank. Fumes--some sort of oily smoke--filled the air.

And yet, the paved roads, the brick and stone buildings...Rand had seen nothing like this short of the Age of Legends, in the crystal columns of Rhuidean. "Where am I?" he wondered aloud.

Lews Therin gibbered about Ilyena as the red-haired girl extended a hand to him. Not Aiel, not if her clothes were any indicator, and no relative of Elayne's. Rand tried to take her hand, realized he'd offered her his stump, and ruefully changed arms.

"Welcome to Sunnydale," she said, helping him up. "Willow Rosenberg. And you are?"

*****

The more Rand studied the city surrounding him, the clearer it became: this place was badly broken.

Windows everywhere--and shattered glass. Empty storefronts. Injured people, and dead ones, lay in the amazing streets. A scent worse than the fumes rested deeper still, and more than a scent: the Dark One's taint.

Shadowspawn roared around the corner on noisy burning machines with two wheels, and Rand lifted his stump. The machines exploded. The Shadowspawn died. Willow squealed with delight. "You're a witch!"

"I am the Dragon Reborn," Rand replied simply. This was his job, or a small facet of it.

*****

Aes Sedai didn't call themselves witches. Willow seemed to revel in the title. Was she something else?

"I don't understand," she grumbled. "It should have worked. Why didn't she come back?" She rubbed her eyes. "Stupid floaters."

Rand looked around at the carnage. "Come back from where? Why would she come back here? We should leave."

"From the dead, Rand. Are you going to tell me I shouldn't too?"

"You can't," Rand said simply. "No one can--"

Willow's head shot up. "Was that her? Buffy! It's me! I'm coming!"

The blonde lurched into a run. Was everyone here Aiel?

*****

Buffy huddled in on herself. Rand didn't expect her to look at him, much less talk to him, but Willow claimed to be her friend. What weren't they telling him?

Of course, Willow also claimed she'd brought Buffy back from the dead, and that was impossible. He'd tried that himself. Even in the Age of Legends, death couldn't be Healed.

Buffy's hands were torn, her fingernails broken, splinters embedded in her flesh. She'd broken through something with her bare hands. A small woman like her couldn't be very strong. "What--?"

She looked into his eyes. "Dark," she said. "Box."

*****

No. Not rage. Rage was useless.

Rand walled the rising red tide up behind his cuendillar surface. "You were in a box?" he asked Buffy with absolute calm. Buffy huddled and didn't answer him, so he turned his gaze on Willow.

"Rand, she was in a *coffin*. She was dead. We buried her."

"And then you...raised her from death still inside that coffin?" No emotion. None. This "Buffy" couldn't really have been dead, but the mistake was still monstrous. "Would you like to know how being trapped in a box feels, Willow?"

"It won't happen again!"

"I suppose not."

*****

Rand lifted his remaining hand. He didn't mean anything by it. He was simply going to ask where to take Buffy and perhaps then try to figure out how to return home himself.

Buffy, though, took it as a threatening gesture. Her hand clamped around his wrist. Rand wasn't concerned. Such a tiny woman, almost as small as Moiraine....

Her grip ground his wristbones together. If he couldn't see her he might have suspected a Myrddraal had him.

"Buffy, stop!" Willow cried. "Don't hurt him!" Buffy didn't stop. She twisted his wrist, forcing him down.

What was this girl?

*****

"Let me go," Rand said flatly. He could free himself with the Power, but the simplest way would be to kill her. He wasn't ready to do that yet. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Buffy, don't," Willow pleaded. "Let us take you home. He won't hurt you."

It would serve no purpose, not if he could free himself some other way. She was in bad shape. Could he perhaps--?

Buffy gasped as the cuts on her hands closed. That tiny Healing strained the limit of what he could manage.

"Will you please let me go?" he asked.

*****

Willow kept a close eye on the guy who called himself Rand. And "the dragon reborn." What was that supposed to mean? But Buffy seemed calmer around him.

Tara liked him too. She'd done a double-take when he entered Casa Summers, but... "No. I thought I knew him for a second. He seems okay but he has a...a bad energy. I don't know."

Bad energy or not, Tara was quietly telling him about Sunnydale. About California. About the world. Where was he from, anyway?

"Oh, Light!" Rand stood up suddenly. "Here? You have a town *here*? Why would you even...*Why?*"

*****

He seemed as if he ought to be kind. Tara studied his face as he went on about how they were all mad to live here. He wasn't wrong.

He wasn't kind. Every few moments she caught a glimpse of it: a hardness in his eyes, a darkness that enveloped him, a phrase that said, yes, he would kill them if they got in his way. But he could have been. He had been.

He reminded her of Buffy that way. Buffy couldn't always afford to be kind.

His eyes met hers. She could swear she knew him. Somehow.

*****

Rand rested his stump on the globe.

It was too much to take in all at once. Not another world, mirrored or otherwise. Another *Age*. Now that the Shadowspawn had fled he was looking at old records. Ann Landers columns. Articles on the "missile gap". "Houston, the Eagle has landed."

"How do I go home, Willow? I've devoted everything to winning Tarmon Gaidon. I can't just walk away."

It wasn't Willow. The youngest girl patted his shoulder. "Armageddon is every day here. We'll make sure you save your world too, ok? Trust us."

"Trust." Lews Therin howled with laughter.

*****

"This is where you died?" Rand asked. The platform trembled. "It doesn't seem very sturdy." He was not nearly so high as he'd been when fighting the Shaido. High enough, though.

Dawn clung to his shoulder. "It was made by crazy people. I don't think it's safe to be up here."

Rand channeled a weave of Earth and Fire, fusing the shakier spots together. "I'm helping a little, but I'm no architect. Maybe visiting the scene of your own death is a bad idea."

Buffy stared at him. "Am I dead? Is this hell?"

*She knows,* Lews Therin whispered.

*****

Buffy slept. Not peacefully, but she slept.

"I just have to wonder what was so bad about undivided magic," Willow said defensively. "I'd be looking for that too."

"I don't think that was the problem," Rand suggested. "Lanfear didn't test it. She just unleashed it. Hundreds of people died right then, and the world almost ended."

"Okay," Willow said uneasily. "I can see that."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," Tara said as if quoting a proverb.

"In the Age of Legends," Rand agreed, "it certainly was. I saw the beginning of the end. An...apocalypse."

*****

"How do you do what you do?" Willow asked. "I know you said you can't teach me saidin and I don't expect you to. But you don't...say anything. Sometimes you move your hands."

Rand frowned. "Can you see the...the flows of magic?"

Willow nodded. "I shape them, make them do what I want. But I still usually need words."

"I think you need to because you believe you do," Rand said tentatively. "I could be wrong, but I've been told that many channelers need the gestures they were trained with. Why not words instead?"

Willow bit her lip. "Makes sense."

*****

Rand cupped the feathers. "I don't know how you do many of the things you do. I know transformations are possible, though." He opened his hand, revealing a flower. "Willow must be amazingly smart."

Tara's mouth was a flat line. "She is. But I worry. She uses so much magic, uses it for everything."

"It's addicting," Rand admitted. "But it's not like drink. The One Power won't harm you once you've mastered it."

"I hope you're right."

\-----

Willow frowned into the mirror, concentrating. The floater, a black dot, vanished from her left eye.

In the right, it re-appeared.


End file.
